Violent protest over Brazilian land reform sees 500 arrested

More than 500 landless protesters were being questioned by police in Brazil's capital yesterday after a violent protest in the country's parliament left at least 23 people injured and one man in intensive care.

Organisers said the protest, which lasted about two hours, was intended to draw attention to the lack of progress in their fight for land reform.

Television images showed confrontations between activists - many with sticks and traffic cones - and security guards, windows being smashed and an attempt to roll a car into the congress building. Police rounded up about 490 suspects and took them to a sports stadium for questioning.

All political parties condemned the protest, organised by the Movimento de Libertacao dos Sem Terra (Movement for Liberation of the Landless or MLST).

"This is inadmissible," Ideli Salvatti, a Workers party senator, told one newspaper. "This kind of episode does more to help criminalise the movement than it does [to advance] agrarian reform."

In a written statement, the president's office described the invasion as "a serious act of vandalism ... against parliament". The president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, said the protest was unacceptable.

Leaders of the MLST - described by the Brazilian media as a "dissident" splinter group of the better-known MST (Landless Movement) - defended their actions. "We want a democratic debate. I do not regret anything that I did, since we are not vandals," the group's leader, Bruno Maranhao, told reporters in Brasilia. Another leader, Marcos Praxedes, blamed the violence on congress security. "They came after us and we just defended ourselves," he told the government news agency Agencia Brasil.

Yesterday a leading Brazilian newspaper reported that seven of the leaders were to be charged with attempted murder after a security guard was admitted to intensive care with head injuries.